experienced these things at the hands of the small boy and the water-buffalo;
and, when both have disappeared in the brushwood, and the sweat of fear has
had time to dry on our clammy foreheads, we have one and all cursed the Devil
who made the brute, and have felt not a little humiliated at the superiority of the
minute native boy over our wretched and abject selves.
All these bitter memories crowd into our minds, when we find ourselves in a
Malay bull-ring, and we should be more than human if we felt any keen
sympathy for the combatant buffaloes. We are apt to experience also an intense
sense of relief at the thought that the brutes are about to fight one another, and
will be too busy to waste any of their energies in persecuting the European
spectators, with the amiable intention of putting them to the shame of open
shame, and generally taking a rise out of them.
The bulls have been trained and medicined, for months beforehand, with much
careful tending, many strength-giving potions, and volumes of the old-world
charms, which put valour and courage into a beast. They stand at each end of a
piece of grassy lawn, with their knots of admirers around them, descanting on
their various points, and with the proud trainer, who is at once keeper and
medicine man, holding them by the cord which is passed through their nose-
rings. Until you have seen the water-buffalo stripped for the fight, it is
impossible to conceive how handsome the ugly brute can look. One has been
accustomed to see him with his neck bowed to the yoke he hates, and breaks
whenever the opportunity offers; or else in the pâdi fields. In the former case he
looks out of place,—an anachronism belonging to a prehistoric period, drawing a
cart which seems also to date back to the days before the Deluge. In the fields
the buffalo has usually a complete suit of grey mud, and during the quiet evening
hour, goggles at you through the clouds of flies, which surround his flapping
ears and brutal nose, the only parts that can be seen of him, above the surface of
the mud-hole, or the running water of the river. In both cases he is unlovely, but
in the bull-ring he has something magnificent about him. His black coat has a
gloss upon it which would not disgrace a London carriage horse, and which
shews him to be in tip-top condition. His neck seems thicker and more powerful
than that of any other animal, and it glistens with the chili water, which has been
poured over it, in order to increase his excitement. His resolute shoulders, his
straining quarters,—each vying with the other for the prize for strength,—and
his great girth, give a look of astonishing vigour and vitality to the animal. It is
the head of the buffalo, however, which it is best to look at on these occasions.
Its great spread of horns is very imposing, and the eyes which are usually sleepy,